Exclusive interview with SCM’s Jamie Saettele on launching a prop trading firm 

The process begins with an evaluation program to sort out candidates during a recruitment cycle. Next, SCM puts traders through a real-time trading simulator where they can trade multiple assets and showcase their skills. 

“Failure is part of the journey. Even experienced traders have failed our assessment, so it’s important to be prepared in case a trade goes the wrong way. With that in mind, we have structured our pricing to incentivize traders to try again, charging only 1% of the amount they will eventually get funded with – making it much easier for traders to recoup their investment once they are on the live account,” Jamie Saettele, Chief Technical Analyst at Scandinavian Capital Markets, told FinanceFeeds.

In order to become a funded trader, the candidate needs to buy an assessment package ranging from $250 to $10,000. So the first step is to choose the tier that fits your abilities and then take a straightforward assessment of trading skills, responsible risk management, and profitability. 

Jamie further explains that once the trader passes the audition, he will get access to a live account to trade at his sole discretion. Approved traders will be provided with an account balance that is equal to 100 times their purchased package. For example, if you buy the $250 plan, upon successful completion of the audition, you would manage $25,000 worth of the company’s capital. 

Eligibility requirements and trading conditions

Successful candidates will get into a funded account almost instantaneously, where they can trade forex, metals, and cryptocurrencies on the MT4 platform. They are then entitled to keep 75% of the profit they generate in their funded account. Traders can request a withdrawal of profit at any time, or reinvest it to supercharge their earnings.

Unlike other firms, Scandinavian Capital Markets doesn’t have time constraints to achieve the profit target. To qualify, a trader simply needs to generate a return of 10% in his account while not incurring a maximum daily loss of 4% or a maximum trailing drawdown of 5%. 

Another main differentiator compared to similar programs is that SCM only charges a one-time fee per assessment, while most competitors charge monthly fees.

A violation of the daily or maximum drawdown constitutes a hard breach that fails the assessment. If it was a funded trader, trading access will be revoked, and the funded account is taken away after paying the trader his portion of any profits.

Nevertheless, there are additional soft breach rules, including the requirement to close all open trades on Friday and place any trade with a stop-loss. In the event of a soft breach, the relevant trade will be closed, but the trader can continue to trade. 

While hedging is allowed, traders are required to flatten over weekends to avoid unexpected losses on weekly gaps. The company says that traders from all countries, excluding OFAC-listed countries, can take part in their program.

“Some of the most consistently profitable traders in the world aren’t based on Wall Street or Canary Wharf; they’re working from their homes, hundreds, even thousands of miles away from major financial centres. We’re looking for the best traders out there to enhance our strategy portfolio,” Jamie further explains.

To sweeten the offering, the renowned market analyst told us that he designed an exclusive course to help traders find educational material on how to succeed in competitions like this. The course will focus on trading psychology, approach, and how to balance what a trader gets from technical analysis and his own intuition.

“We will have ebooks and video lectures that will guide traders through these types of competitions and hopefully help them understand how to use the rules to their advantage,” he added. 

A mission is to identify talented traders 

Funded trader programs have vaulted into the spotlight in recent years, offering plenty of benefits to profitable traders who can generate consistent returns.

Established providers of such products offer exceptional services since their own money is at stake. More importantly, the idea of using someone else’s money to trade offers a risk-free way for proven traders to monetize their skills and make some money along the way.

As one of the top forex brokers out there, Scandinavian Capital Markets offers the opportunity to leverage their multi-asset offering and favourable trading conditions. And if a trader has what it takes, he can join the firm as a full-time trader. On the asset management side, the company has funded millions of dollars in capital and paid out north of a million in performance fees to asset managers.

“One of the biggest challenges for every experienced trader is how to scale their profits, without risking their livelihoods. Even if you are doing a phenomenal performance, if your balance is low, it will take some time until you really scale it. What we are offering is a way for traders that are doing these phenomenal performances, to grow their accounts with the backing of a prime brokerage,” concludes Jamie Saettele.

Scandinavian Capital Markets is a premier STP-ECN forex broker based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company has been operating since 2011 and is authorized and registered with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA).